I was riding my bicycle yesterday on my way to work when I came across the above sharrows. They’re on W 23rd Ave between Quitman St and Stuart St. I am significantly disappointed in the placement of these.

What’s wrong you ask? Sharrows are intended to provide guidance to cyclists regarding best lane positioning. The placement of these sharrows would seem to encourage riding into parked cars. Notice the car on the left which is parked on top of a sharrow.

Denver has a 3-1-1 website which you can post these types of issues. I reported it and took this photo to demonstrate the issue. 3-1-1 is very good about providing responses. Here’s the response I received:

Hi Mike,

Unfortunately our crews placed the sharrows on W. 23rd Ave. between Stuart and Quitman in the wrong location.  The road narrows considerably and they must not have seen there was parking in these 2 narrow blocks.  I’ve copied the pavement markings supervisor so he can advise whether or not the problem can be corrected.

Look, I get it. People make mistakes. I’m just upset the mistake was made with thermoplastic on fresh asphalt. Now someone’s going to have to come out, grind up the pavement to remove the markings and place them further out into the road out of the parking lane. This isn’t the first road I’ve seen the mistakes made on. There’s a portion of Logan St with sharrows where it is quite obvious the same mistake was made.

Hopefully I can post a followup post in a couple weeks with better placement.

Still fuzzy on what sharrows are? Read my previous post with some words on sharrows.